


Blind Trust

by Explosivemarbles



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-05-21
Updated: 2012-06-21
Packaged: 2017-11-05 18:48:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/409799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Explosivemarbles/pseuds/Explosivemarbles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One of Loki's tricks send the Avengers to far-off corners of the Earth. They are all bound, gagged, and blindfolded. Each must find a way home. Loki watches all of them at first, to see how they fare deprived of their toys, but finds himself drawn to one Steve Rogers, aka Captain America.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've been working on this one for a while and every time I open it I start to completely re-write it, so I'm finally posting it so it has a definite beginning. Enjoy!  
> Also, comments & constructive criticism are welcome.
> 
> ...so I'm working on getting the next bit up here. I didn't really think anyone would read this, but all the Kudos tell me to finish my editing and get on with it. So thanks for motivating me folks!  
> There will be adult content before the end, you've been fairly warned.

A flash of blue-green light, a taste of ozone, and Steve hits the snow. At first he experiences only the cold. He can see nothing; the blindfold is snugly over his eyes. He struggles against the rope binding his wrists behind his back. _I’m not gonna be able to break the ropes, they gotta be magically enhanced, that damn Loki!_ He realizes. He relaxes and starts to wriggle out of his gloves. It takes time, and his hands go numb before he’s done. Once the ropes are off, he rips off the blindfold and gazes around in disbelief. All he can see for miles is virgin snow, its harsh glare in the sunlight forcing him to shade his eyes with one numb hand. Panic hits him with the first real gust of sub-zero wind. Loki has transported him to Antarctica.  
 _It was disgustingly easy to ensnare the mortals. They fell for the same illusion that my brother Thor always has. I don’t think he will ever learn how to see through my body double trick. Such a simple spell for such a simple mind. It was almost so simple it wasn’t fun. Opened a portal behind my doppelganger and the idiots just fell through. Well, all save the archer, but with his penchant for falling off of things as he attacks, it wasn’t that difficult to ensnare him. Now the games can begin._ Loki strolls into his kitchen, shedding his helmet, armor, and boots as he goes, carelessly tossing them on the floor. He has acquired what mortals call ‘popped corn’ for his special event. Taking it into the bedroom, he snaps his fingers and six huge flat-screen TVs light up. Each shows a different scene from nature; a pine forest, rolling desert, mountain peak, African savanna, a tropical island, and chilling arctic snow. However these are far from a Discovery Channel special. Each beautiful landscape contains a motionless, bound human figure.  
Steve stands and tosses away the rope. No human-made structures are visible, and he can see for miles. _It’s not comforting that I don’t see my team. Maybe it should be. Maybe they’re not here, maybe they’re safe. I have no way of knowing. He looks at the blindfold in his hand. No sense throwing this away, not when I can use it._ He ties the cloth over his mouth, the only part of his face left exposed by the uniform. _It’s probably too much to hope that my shield made it here too._ Looking around, he confirms this. What on earth do I do now? He stamps his feet and shoves his hands in his armpits. _Well Rogers_ , he says to himself, _you never depended on handouts before, why start now?_ _Better get moving._ He looks up at the sun, barely visible behind the clouds, picks a direction, and starts walking.  
This is where the camera would zoom out, up and away, through the screen and out into Loki’s bedroom. The Captain is a smallish red and blue ant on a field of white. Loki is ignoring him. _Oh Brother dear, your new ‘friends’ are so predictable._ Loki is reclining on his silk-sheeted bed, propped up with gold and green pillows, eating his Midgardian snack. _But they make surprisingly good foods. Entertainingly crunchy._ His attention is focused on the mountain peak. There a large, green, and angry thing flings boulders down the mountainside, roaring and gnashing his teeth. _Had I known it was this easy... hmmph. at least the first stage of my plan is a success. I shall remember this._ Loki mutes the Hulk with a remote that contains no batteries, and shifts his attention to the desert. The flame-haired maiden should awaken soon.  
Steve Rogers nearly has his eyes shut against the howling wind. _I wish I had my shield to block some of this_ , he wishes not for the first time. Even though there is nothing visible anything for miles, he calls out for his teammates. The wind rips his voice away and he wonders, would anyone even hear me if they were standing ten feet away? Ignoring this he continues to shout names in the hope that someone, anyone is nearby. He has tried to gauge what direction is north based on the sun. After a few miles of walking it occurs to him: _If I am in Antarctica, wouldn’t the angle of the sun be different? Isn’t it the south pole? For that matter, how do I know this is the south pole and not the north pole?_ He stops to think a moment, trying to figure out how to correct his path, but his shivering is so bad that he can’t concentrate well. _I need to get out of this wind. Shelter._ He forces himself to keep walking.  
Loki gives a sarcastic little clap as the redhead finally pulls herself out of the sand. Any longer and she would have been buried completely. He watches with growing amusement as she quickly slips her bonds and checks where all of her weapons and devices should be. She walks to the top of a dune, surveys her surroundings, and returns to her original position. _Now what shall you do, deprived of all your toys, ripped away from your keepers?_ She unzips her uniform. _Unexpected_. She extracts something from... _an overlooked place_. _Clever. Should I disable it...?_ She zips up her uniform as he contemplates. _No. Fair play. I did not think to..._ He laughs to himself. _I shall allow this. Should you find a way to cheat me, who am I, such a god of lies, to punish that?_ In the end he was so amused at the woman’s hiding place that he allowed her to call for a ride. She was picked up by one of the metal machines called a “Blackhawk” though it bore no resemblance to any hawk he had ever seen.  
Steve had gone entirely numb somewhere in the first thirty minutes of exposure. His “uniform” was not meant for the extreme temperatures of the arctic. He assumed the only reason he wasn’t dead yet was the super-soldier serum. It was responsible for his survival in the ice the first time around... _I wonder what sort of sick joke Loki thinks this is, sending me back to an icy hell_ , he pondered grimly. I _wish I had let Stark put tracking gadgets in my suit. I could have been out of here by now._ He trudges on. _I wonder where Loki sent the others_. Worrying for his team gives him renewed strength, thinking that the rest of his team could still be in this waste with him. Natasha and Clint wouldn’t be able to survive long at all, could already be dead. Just because he hadn’t seen them yet didn’t mean they were safe. He shouts their names again, arms plastered across his chest in a feeble attempt to hold in body heat. He refuses to give up until he knows what has happened to his team.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The games continue, and Loki is surprised by the resilience of an Avenger...

Loki watches as Tony Stark stirs in the dust of the African savanna. Stark has been stripped of everything; any metal, plastic, or otherwise synthetic material. Save one thing, that is, as Stark had flatlined without the glowing light in his chest. Loki has been forced to put it back or ruin his own game. _Such a weakness, how can he let himself be so vulnerable? Let’s see how intelligent you are without all your toys to help you, Stark. What are you without your gadgets?_ In his frustration over the arc reactor Loki had not been so kind when removing Stark’s tracer. Stark’s arm has a trail of clotted blood leading to a chunk missing out of his arm. Loki chuckles as the man writhes around in the dust of the African savanna, pulling at the ropes binding him.

            After an unknowable amount of time spent trudging through knee-deep snow, Steve finally lets himself think that his team is not here. Surely he would have seen someone, anyone by now. He’s been talking to himself for miles, rationalizing, trying to think in spite of the cold. He’s decided that Loki engineered this torture specifically for him, to remind him of his years spent in the ice. He stubbornly refuses to give in to the crushing emotions of lost time, the fear of more lost time. He will not lose his friends again. He can’t imagine waking up in another future, being more out of time, more lost than he already has been. To stop his teeth chattering he sings to himself, and tries not to be frightened at how hoarse he sounds.

            Loki feels almost bored watching his brother search for Mjolnir. He’d left Thor on a tiny uninhabited island in the Pacific, so no Midgardians would be around to assist him. Initially it had been amusing to watch Thor question himself. Loki had bewitched Mjolnir so it would no longer fly to his brother’s hand. He could not change the requirements Odin placed upon it in order to lift it, but he _could_ open a portal beneath it and drop it where he pleased. Thor had tried to summon Mjolnir immediately after easily ripping through the ropes that bound him. Loki had cackled gleefully seeing the look on his brother’s face when it did not come. But then the morose sitting in the sand annoyed him so much that he sent an illusion down to Thor. He taunted his brother into anger, and dispelled the illusion when Thor tried to grab him. Then Thor started crashing around the tiny island to find the hammer, cursing Loki for a foul trickster all the while. But taunting his brother has somehow lost its flavor. The same old dance. _Nothing will ever change between us, brother. It’s too late to go back now._

            Steve sang the first song that came to mind. He didn’t know why it was Dinah Shore, perhaps a sort of weird pun on his situation, his desire to go home... his desire to really have someone to go home to. Not just his team, but a partner. Peggy was long gone. He wasn’t sure if he would find anyone like her again. _You’d be so nice to come home to,_ He sang, _You’d be so nice by the fire_ , eyes barely open against the wind, so he didn’t see that he was about to misstep. _While the breeze, on high, sang a lullaby, You’d be all that I could desire-_

Loki is suddenly distracted from his brother by the barely-audible tune from the Captain’s screen. He mutes Thor’s raging and turns up the volume on the frozen wasteland. Loki doesn’t recognize the tune any more than he would recognize any other Midgardian music, but it interests him. The Captain has stopped calling for help like a child and has started singing. It’s hard for Loki to hear the man, because he has tied the blindfold over his mouth. _He stumbles. He is not the weakest of them, no, but nor is he the strongest. Why do they listen to him? He’s just another fighter._ Loki taps his chin, wondering. _There is nothing so extraordinary about him. He is not even as strong as one of us from Asgard. He has no special wisdom, not such as the Stark man lays claim to. Why follow such an unremarkable man?_ Then Loki watches the star-spangled man struggle up a snowdrift and fall down the other side in a cascade of glittering white. __

The fall had nearly done him in. Even with the serum Steve’s body was barely able to cope. He clutched his hands under his armpits, wondering if he would just freeze in place like an icicle or if he would be able to get frostbite this time. He huddled in the snow, almost feeling warmer, but he knew it wasn’t. Steve fumbled some of the snow off and pulled the blindfold down to yell. “There is no way I am re-freezing myself!” He shouted at the howling wind. “Hear me Loki? I refuse! I won’t give in! _You won’t win!_ ” Then Steve mumbled to himself. “I won’t freeze here. Not again. I’ll take this life over no life. It’s not perfect but it’s _mine_ and I won’t let you take it from me.” He gets up and forces his legs to move, step by agonizing step.

Loki has found himself waiting with baited breath to see if the star-spangled man would rise, rather than laughing at the fall. Then he is startled by the direct address. It echoes loudly in his bedroom, and with the volume up so high, he hears the Captain’s softer-spoken words. _He’s traveled father than I expected, and kept his head far better than the others._ Loki glances at Thor’s still-thrashing figure amidst the jungle, at the green monster flinging boulders down a mountain. _His limits are greater than anticipated. How much farther can he go?_ Loki dipped his hand in the popcorn bowl and fiddled with the kernels at the bottom. There was something about the Captain that truly was different from the rest. But what was it? What quality made him so worthy?

Meanwhile the other players in the game struggled on. Clint Barton still tries to move with a broken leg, Thor continues thrashing at palm trees, and the Hulk tumbles down a mountainside. Tony Stark is chased into a tree by cackling hyenas. Loki is temporarily amused watching Stark kick at the predators while set upon by small tree-creatures cawing angrily at him. _No better skills than a Midgardian ape!_ Loki giggles to himself and glances at the green monster. It had finally laid down to rest and become Bruce again, and another flying machine retrieved him. Bruce also had a tracker implanted in his skin, and Loki had wanted to see when they would attempt to get their “Hulk” back. Loki knew that they had waited to collect him until that moment. He assumed correctly... they considered the beast too dangerous to reason with. _Perhaps an advantage in the future, should I find adequate material to enrage him with._ _“We have a Hulk.” Pfeh. What use is rage beast when you cannot control it?_


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki makes the game more interesting.

Stark was still stuck in the tree, trying to wait out the hyenas below. It seemed the man wasn’t much of a threat without his suit or tools. His witticisms might have been interesting had Loki cared to pay attention. Barton had passed out multiple times from pain. However it _was_ remarkable how far he had managed to travel with a broken femur and elbow. Of course, the man wasn’t much of threat when deprived of his tools either – just a man – he never was a real threat to Loki. Then of course there was Thor, who still hadn’t found Mjolnir. He would be able to use the hammer again normally when he found it; he just had to pick it up to break the binding Loki has placed on it. This all would have been much more amusing to Loki if he was bothering to pay attention, but the star-spangled man had every ounce of his attention.

It had been almost a full day since Loki had begun his game. Two players were out of the game, four still in. Barton had made a shelter, giving up on dragging himself any further. Stark was making primitive defensive tools and was managing to fend off his attackers before nightfall, but Loki knew that there was more than one enemy waiting until cover of darkness. This “Africa” held some delightful varieties of felines. Thor had given up finding Mjolnir for a time and tried to swim away from the island, but only got 100 yards from the beach before realizing he was a terrible swimmer and turned back. The god now sat despondently on the beach, wet and sunburned. Loki found all these uninteresting.

 _The game is slowing down… time to making it interesting._ Loki appeares in front of his brother again. “Still haven’t found it yet?” He said to his startled brother. “Perhaps Odin has… ah but he would not. You are the _favorite,_ you always have been. He would not test you needlessly this way, not again. Unless you have done something to make yourself unworthy of Mjolnir’s power…?” Loki strolls across the sand, watching Thor search his feeble mind, then doubt himself. “Impossible of course. You were never able do to wrong in Odin’s eyes.” Thor looks up at him. “Brother –“ he begins, but Loki vanishes before Thor can reach for him.

Loki visits Barton and Stark as well. He barely remembers what he said to Stark, just the expected mix of fear and anger on his face, and brave yet snotty and childlike words to cover it. Nothing surprising. Loki stole Stark’s clothing just to annoy him. Loki has more fun with Barton, sneaking up on him and grabbing his broken elbow from behind. Loki can feel the man’s struggle not to cry out in pain. Loki whispers in Barton’s ear, reminding him of his servitude. Barton’s good knee wobbles, as if he wants to kneel, so Loki twists the arm back. “You reveled in it. You want to kneel. It is your _nature_ to serve another. This weak SHEILD is not _worthy_ of a man with your skills. You remember what it was to serve me.” He hisses in Barton’s ear. Barton trembles but is unable to truly deny it. “I don’t – no – I don’t want… don’t want to remember…” he gasps as Loki twists his arm once more, before leaving laughter in his ear as he lets him fall to the ground.

Loki is still laughing when falls back in his bed. _Mind games with him were always the most fun. So much heart and fight in him! He fought me but he wanted to be conquered._ He stretches and sits up, then realizes he hasn’t visited his last player in the game. The Captain in his snowy waste. _How to make it interesting? Removing his clothing would easily be more embarrassing for him, but counter-productive to making the game last… what sort of beasts live in this icey place?_ Loki contemplated his move for some time before deciding. _It’s the opposite of what I’ve done with the others. It may be enough to unnerve him if I say it has been altered._ Loki picks up The Captain’s shield from his floor and vanishes.

After so much blinding white, the red and blue of the shield stood out to Steve like a lighthouse beacon to a drowning man. Steve climbed the hill with frozen, claw-like hands. It was only when he stood in front of it that he realized who was holding it. “ _You.”_ He spits it out like a curse. Loki laughs at him, holds out the shield like it’s Christmas morning. He hesitates. Is it truly _his_ shield? He reaches out for it, and Loki vanishes, dropping the shield into the snow. He falls on it and hugs it to his body as if it were his savior. He couldn’t even feel the cold metal. His tear ducts had frozen shut, but Steve was sure if he could have, he would have cried. The weight was perfect, exactly as he knew it. It had to be his. Steve turned and sat on his shield, then slid down the hill and found himself laughing. He remembered sledding in the park with Bucky so many many years ago, as children... runny noses, mittened hands, hot chocolate and warm doorways welcoming them home... Steve imagined he could smell the wet wool mittens drying on the radiator. Steve laughed again and ran back up the little hill, sledding down again on his shield.

Loki was baffled. What was the Captain doing? He had expected the man to dig with the shield maybe, or try to block the wind. But the grown man was... _playing. Laughing!_ _Have I so easily pushed him over the brink of madness that he has abandoned all attempts to survive?_ The man could be dead from exposure or frozen into a coma in just a few hours but he had stopped to _play?_ He truly did not understand the situation. Perhaps he thought SHIELD was on its way. _I must_ _put a stop to it and remind the Captain exactly what doom he faces if he should not take the game seriously._


End file.
